Up until yesterday nobody knew what the section was for. Linkedin is very popular within the community for not talking to users but just announcing changes in a oligarchic style. This was no exception.

So what happens is that yesterday I saw magically appearing on the right hand side of the screen an "Events" widget.

No news here as if you are on Xing they have a super cool event section as well as an ambassador program with Xing official events (1st in UK on Nov 25, 2008 in London)

I started to add the events for the Linkedin Event Planning & Management Group as well as ecoCamp and an online free seminar I am running on how to improve your career using Linkedin.

The RSVP section is also an highlight. You can point out whether you are presenting, exhibiting, attending or organizing.

In your My Events section you have some stats about the events you are running.

The event section is very well done. You have extensive tag area, a description and you can highlight the job roles interested in the event. When I added ecoCampLondon which has an RSVP in place on EventBrite the system automatically filled in the fields which is a great thing.

There is a promotional section where you can forward the event to your connections. What a disappointment to discover you can send it to a maximum of 10 connections, may work for a pub crawl though.

In the Browse Events Section they talk about Premium Event Opportunities. At the moement you can just send an email, which I did obviously with no reply (why not a messenger pigeon then?)

My first impressions in the end are mixed.

On one hand I welcome the long awaited change. It took Linkedin 3 years to realize events are a huge chunk of online networking.

On the other hand, I am simply getting tired of Linkedin not getting in touch with its user base. I expected they got in touch with our/their community of almost 4000 event professionals to get feedback on how to develop the service.

What's your opinion? Have you tried the service?

I'll also ping Jason Alba, a Linkedin guru, to tell us his experience and thoughts.